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Having been born yesterday, quite literally, gives me the unalienable right to be unbearably naïve.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this film is that cable television companies can slot it to show several times every day for the past couple of months without transforming it into something to avoid. That’s because it’s a Casablanca-level masterpiece of storytelling that mirrors every viewer’s ability to apprehend and process micro-themes, macro-themes, jokes, timings, call-backs, clues, gags, biblical/topical references, star turns, and exposition that’s at least as pithy and direct as a punch in the face. And there’s no shortage of those: Literal punches in the face, and exploding shit and adult language and sexual implications and enough on-point, cogent witty repartee to choke an academic.

And then there’s the moment when Mjolnir’s in the grip of Captain America, who, apart from Thor, is surely the most-worthy of the Avengers. And Mjolnir seems to twitch in the Captain’s tightening hand — or maybe that’s just a side effect of the rackfocused leap (impressive camera operation that amplifies and optimizes the primary pursuit of this enterprise — storytelling) from the foreground hammer to the background flash of shock, dismay and anxiety tearing across Thor’s mug — remembering how Odin raised the moral bar of WORTH on the arrogant ignoramus Thor used to be before Jane and love and sacrifice ennobled his ass to smithereens.

In retrospect…the whole film seems exactly like absolutely-inevitable exquisite storytelling I (for one) wasn’t expecting. Because I’m as unbearably naïve as the Vision, whose optimism regarding the presentiment and fate of Mankind bears eagle-eyed watching, not of course, by Hawkeye, who doesn’t seem to understand people shit (maybe his wife will explain) but sure got a lot of great lines to mutter obliquely Popeye-style.